By Mildred Ngwerume-Sigwadhi
When people are forced to leave a place they have called home, especially under frightening circumstances, they lose far more than their possessions.
They lose their sense of safety, certainty, stability and control over their lives. This is what some of the people who were living in South Africa experienced this profound, sudden shattering of safety as a result of the March and March. The March and March is a South African citizen-led movement founded by activist Ngobese-Zuma that focuses on the socio-economic impact of illegal immigration. But now, even the validly documented foreigners have also been adversely affected as the activists ransacked all homes of foreigners they know, whether documented or not. Since the month of June 2026, many foreign nationals including Zimbabweans who were based in South Africa returned home following reports of xenophobic or Afrophobic violence, intimidation and fear in some communities. While circumstances and experiences differed, many families left in haste and in fear, abandoning their homes, jobs, businesses, possessions and the routines they had built over many years. Some children had to leave school unexpectedly, while others witnessed traumatising events from the time the violence and intimidation erupted and during the journey back to Zimbabwe. This can have lasting psychological effects.
For many of these families, returning home was a prompt and not a carefully planned decision, but a desperate act of survival. They arrived carrying not only bags, but grief, uncertainty and questions without answers on how they are going to rebuild their lives.
As a counselling psychologist, I often meet people who are carrying more than invisible scars, but emotional wounds caused by traumatic events. Therefore, behind every family that came back recently, is a psychological story that deserves to be understood. In this column, I hope to help readers to understand the psychological issues affecting our communities and to offer practical steps towards healing, resilience and moving from despair to hope and transformation.
1. The Psychology of Sudden Displacement
Let us dissect what happens in the minds and bodies of the survivors of the March and March using simple, relatable psychological concepts.
- The Shattered Assumption of Safety: Naturally, humans operate on the assumption that the ground beneath them is relatively stable. Psychologists call this the Assumption of Safety. When families are suddenly hunted, forced to hide in freezing bushes, and stripped of their homes, this basic mental foundation is completely shattered. The brain enters a prolonged state of survival, viewing the entire world as hostile and unpredictable.
- Chronic Fight-or-Flight and Freezing: Some people fled and hid in unfamiliar places without food nor warmth when the March and March ransacked every home of a foreigner they knew. The human brain is designed to protect us from danger. During those traumatic events, their bodies released stress hormones that prepared them to fight, flee, or freeze. This forces the nervous system into a state of chronic hyper-arousal (constantly on guard for danger) or hypo-arousal (freezing, feeling numb or dissociated). While this response helps humans to survive immediate danger, it does not simply disappear once they reach safety. Many people continue to feel anxious, fearful, restless, or emotionally numb long after the event has ended. For children, this raw survival state is terrifying because their developing brains rely on adult stability to feel secure. Under those above circumstances, even the adults were in fear and felt insecure.
- The Weight of Ambiguous Loss: Unlike a natural disaster where a community grieves a physical event together, these returnees are experiencing “Ambiguous Loss”. They have lost their “life-as-they-knew-it”, their jobs, networks of friends, school structures, and familiar streets, the community they were used to, but the physical structures still exist elsewhere. Grieving a life that was forcibly left behind, rather than physically destroyed, is incredibly complicated and painful.
- Cultural and Identity Dislocation: Many children were born or raised in South Africa and are arriving “home” to a country they have never actually lived in. There was little time to prepare them. They are experiencing a painful identity crisis, feeling like foreigners in South Africa and strangers in their own ancestral homeland.
Many returnees witnessed violence, fled in fear, spent nights in unfamiliar places, worried about their children, lost jobs and income, and returned to Zimbabwe without knowing where they would sleep or how they would start to rebuild their lives. These experiences can overwhelm even the strongest person.
Children may also be deeply affected. Some may become withdrawn, cling to their parents, have nightmares, struggle to concentrate, or become unusually irritable. Others may appear to be coping well but silently carry fear and uncertainty. Adults may experience sadness, guilt, anger, hopelessness, difficulty sleeping, loss of appetite, or constant worry about the future. These are common reactions after traumatic experiences and do not necessarily mean that someone is mentally ill.
2. Practical Strategies for Returnees
For individuals who are currently displaced, homeless, and lacking a clear starting point, standard psychological advice like “go to therapy” may be out of touch. Instead, focus on Psychological First Aid and micro-steps for survival and grounding.
i.) Secure the “Basics of Belonging” Through the Communities
Finding a human shelter is the first priority.
The Step: If you had managed to build a house before, the better. If you do not have a shelter, do not try to carry this weight alone (yadeuka, yadeuka, haichina muoreri). Seek out temporary shelter from friends and relatives or utilise the reception centres that the Government in collaboration with humanitarian partners like IOM (International Organisation for Migration) and local churches have established across the country.
The Psychology: Surviving trauma requires co-regulation, the psychological term for how human nervous systems calm each other down. Being around even one or two other people who share your experience, or who offer a kind, non-judgmental space, physically lowers your body’s stress hormones (cortisol and adrenaline).
ii.) Accept your emotions without judging yourself.
You survived something frightening. It is normal to grieve what you have lost. Give yourself permission to cry (it is ok for men to cry- they also have feelings and they feel pain too), to feel disappointed, and to acknowledge your pain. Healing begins when we allow ourselves to feel rather than pretending everything is fine.”
iii.) Focus on “Micro-Control”
When you have lost your home, assets, and routine, you feel completely powerless. This helplessness is what causes deep trauma. Trauma creates chaos.
The Step: Reclaim control over tiny, daily routines and decisions. Deciding exactly what time to wash your face, preparing meals together, helping with other household tasks, praying together, how to arrange a temporary sleeping corner (even if it is on the floor or in a shared space), or choosing to sing a specific song to your child can restore a sense of stability, especially for children.
The Psychology: Establishing small routines creates islands of predictability in a sea of chaos. It tells your brain: “I am not entirely powerless. I still have agency.”
iv.) Focus on today’s needs before tomorrow’s worries.
Many people are overwhelmed because they are trying to solve your whole future and everything at once. When our minds are anxious, they try to solve the next 10 years at once.
I encourage you to ask short term questions like:
- Where will we sleep tonight?
- Who can support us today?
- Who can I call today?
- What is the next practical step?
Instead of “how am I going to survive…”.
Breaking life into manageable pieces reduces feelings of helplessness and those small steps eventually become a new life.
v.) Swallow your pride when necessary and do not suffer alone.
Many people stopped talking to their relatives because of misunderstandings or distance. This may be the time to reach out (mwana asingacheme, anofira mumbereko). You do not have to pretend nothing happened. Also bear in mind that not everyone will respond positively, but that one person can create a huge difference. Isolation increases emotional distress.
I encourage people to:
- Accept that rebuilding begins with relationships. Therefore, reconnect with family and friends
- Ask for help without shame. (Many people feel embarrassed about starting over). Needing help after a crisis is not weakness. It is part of being human. Every community grows stronger when people support one another
- seek support from churches
- approach community leaders
- join support groups
- speak with trained counsellors where available
Healing often begins when people realise they are not alone.
vi.) Grounding the Body (Crucial for Hiding/Bush Trauma)
People who survived hiding in the cold bushes often remain physically tense, as if the danger is still present.
The Step: Practice simple, silent physical grounding techniques. One of the most effective is box breathing exercises (inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4, exhale for 4, hold for 4) or sensory anchoring (silently naming 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear around you right now).
The Psychology: These techniques stimulate the vagus nerve, sending a physical signal to the brain’s alarm system (the amygdala) that says, “You are no longer in the bushes. You are safe right now.”
A message specifically for parents: Emotional Shielding for the Children
Children take their emotional cues from the adults around them. If the adults are visibly terrified, the child’s trauma deepens.
The Step: Talk to the children honestly but shield them from adult despair. Tell them, “We are in a very hard transition right now, but we are a team, we will get through this.” Give them small “jobs” to do (e.g., watching over a sibling or holding a specific bag) to give them a sense of purpose.
- Children do not need parents who have all the answers.
- They need parents who make them feel safe.
- They draw strength from calm, loving adults
I encourage parents to:
- hug your children
- allow the children to talk about what happened
- answer questions honestly using age-appropriate language
- reassure them that the family is facing the future together
3. A Message of Hope: Post-Traumatic Growth
While the cold of the winter and the cruelty of human hostility have stripped away your physical belongings, they have not stripped away your inborn resilience that allowed you to survive, work, build lives and raise children in South Africa, a foreign land. Those traits did not stay behind in South Africa. You travelled across the border with them in your hearts and minds.
To every family returning home with uncertainty, empty hands, and heavy hearts, know that what happened to you does not define your future. You have already demonstrated remarkable courage by surviving unimaginable circumstances. The road ahead may not be easy, but healing is possible. Lives can be rebuilt, communities can come together, and hope can grow again, one step at a time. Sometimes recovery begins not with having all the answers, but with taking the next small step, accepting support, and believing that this chapter is not the end of your story.
Even after the darkest night, morning comes. This was a painful, unexpected winter, but spring always follows. Your capacity to rebuild remains. May we, as a nation and as communities, become the hands that lift one another, ensuring that those who have returned home are met not with judgment but with compassion, empathy, practical support, and renewed hope.
Mildred Ngwerume-Sigwadhi is a Lecturer at Reformed Church University and a Counselling Psychologist registered with Allied Health Practitioners’ Council of Zimbabwe
